HE Magazine, Fall 2008

College of Human Ecology, Cornell University • November 2008 • Volume 36, Number 2

Multidisciplinary Academics, Research, and Outreach

Volume 36, Number 2 November 2008 Published by the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University Alan Mathios, PhD Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean, College of Human Ecology Josephine Swanson, PhD Assistant Dean, Outreach and Extension Associate Director, Cornell Cooperative Extension John Lamson Assistant Dean, Communications Sheri Hall Assistant Director, Communications Cornell’s College of Human Ecology publishes this magazine to illustrate how its programs address complex societal issues to improve the human condition. This mission of human improvement is accomplished through faculty initiatives in research, outreach, and teaching—with an emphasis on an ecological perspective, collaborative projects, and multidisciplinary curricula within and across five academic units: the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis; the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design; the Department of Human Development; the Department of Policy Analysis and Management; and the Division of Nutritional Sciences, a unit shared with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The college includes the Family Life Development Center and the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center.

Above: Statue of the Contemplation of Justice from the front of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

What’s i InShort 2

William Trochim and his colleagues develop evaluation systems for huge and complex organizations, helping researchers, educators, and public employees to implement programs that address society’s challenges

ISSN 1530-7069. Published by the New York State College of Human Ecology. Third-class postage paid at Ithaca, N.Y. Reprinting: Unless otherwise noted, permission is granted to reproduce material appearing in this magazine upon notification of the editor, provided that full acknowledgment is made of the source and no change is made without approval.

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©2008 Cornell University

Designing Evaluation Systems Based on Empirical Evidence

More than Skin Deep Chih-Chang “C.C.” Chu is working with Cornell researchers in the engineering and medical colleges to develop artificial skin, heart valves, and blood vessels

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Morgan Seed Grant Projects 7

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Cornell Population Program Spans Domestic and International Issues Multidisciplinary program delves beyond basic demographics to understand their impact and improve people’s lives

14 Cornell University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action educator and employer.

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

As we go to print on this issue of Human Ecology, President-elect Barack Obama is working on the transition to his administration after an historic election in America.

On January 20, 2009, he will inherit a pivotal leadership role in a global society faced with challenges and opportunities that are increasingly complex and interconnected.

Our ability to respond effectively, as a society and as institutions, relies ever more on our ability to understand and analyze these problems from a variety of perspectives, and then to forge solutions which integrate those perspectives and leverage the resulting synergies.

As it has been throughout our history, this remains the foundation of the College of Human Ecology’s approach to advancing our three missions of academics, research, and extension/outreach.

Working within a context of strong, distinct disciplines, we seek out the places where those disciplines intersect and the missions integrate to achieve lasting and meaningful impact on the world around us.

This magazine explores many of our current endeavors in this light, both within the college and across Cornell and the Cornell Cooperative Extension system. From global health, poverty, and nutrition to the justice system, tissue engineering, and the rapidly shifting demographic make-up of the world we live in, Human Ecology faculty, researchers, students, and extension professionals are engaged in vital multidisciplinary collaborations.

In the classroom, I’ve always told my students that the best way to advance your own understanding of the world is to explore different approaches and different disciplinary perspectives in order to address today’s most pressing issues. That is what the College of Human Ecology is all about and I believe strongly that this approach will yield the innovative breakthroughs that will impact our lives.

The new year will undoubtedly bring new challenges and Sincerely, opportunities to our doorstep. At the College of Human Ecology, we will continue to tackle them with a multidisciplinary approach, an entrepreneurial spirit, and an abiding sense of community.

inside. . .

Live Broadcast Discusses Role of Chaos in Children’s Development

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Legal Eagles New program brings a scientific eye to the law

Corner

Dean’s

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Alan D. Mathios Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean College of Human Ecology

From Breast Cancer to Recycling Textiles: Human Ecology Student Interns Address Challenges Facing Central New York Communities

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23 ‘Ignore the Poor at Your Own Peril’ Human Ecology faculty lend their expertise to universitywide initiative examining poverty dynamics

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Water Cooler Conversations 21

Researchers: Every $1 Invested in New York Nutrition Program Reduces Participants’ Health Care Costs by $10

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Human Ecology Experts Lead Symposium on AIDS Crisis in Africa

28 Afterword Better Living Through Design

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Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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In Short Where does our past begin?

Qi Wang, associate professor of human development, wrote an article about the implications of social and cultural factors on childhood amnesia for the Psychological Science Agenda, which is published by the American Psychological Association. In the article, she argues that different selfviews across cultures may influence the extent to which people can recall very long-term memories, including their earliest childhood experiences. www.apa.org/science/psa/wang.html

Research on two fronts: Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes Biochemist and geneticist Ling Qi, assistant professor in nutritional sciences, received grants this year for work on two distinct diseases. Qi received the American Diabetes Association Junior Faculty Award for his work in finding the gene that links obesity and Type II diabetes. And he received the 2008 Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation/AFAR New Investigator Awards in Alzheimer’s Disease.

Qi’s background is in studying the link between Type II diabetes and obesity, but he’s always been interested in Alzheimer’s disease as well. “The techniques used in studying both diseases are similar, just in different cell types,” Qi explained. “Coming from a different background, I believe our diverse knowledge will be helpful to the Alzheimer’s field.”

Aggression between residents is prevalent in nursing homes

New grants to create fabrics that render toxic chemicals harmless

Karl Pillemer, director of the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging at the College of Human Ecology, and Dr. Mark Lachs, chief of the Division of Geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College, received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct the first large-scale study of residentto-resident verbal and physical aggression and violence in nursing homes. Their investigation will look at how extensive such aggression and violence is, what causes it, and ultimately what can be done to prevent it. The research program builds on two previous articles co-authored by Pillemer, Lachs, and Tony Rosen (WCMC) which found that this type of aggression is common, can result in serious consequences, and requires further study to identify risk factors and preventative measures.

Trauma of 9/11 appears to have altered brains, study suggests Fiber science assistant professor Juan Hinestroza is a member of two teams that secured grants from the U.S. Department of Defense totaling over $2.2 million to create fabrics made of functional nanofibers that would decompose toxic industrial chemicals into harmless byproducts. Approximately $875,000 of the grant will go directly to Hinestroza’s work. Both grants are multiuniversity collaborative efforts funded through the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

The grants will fund basic research into the science behind creating such materials, which the Department of Defense could use to create new products. Potential applications include safety gear for U.S. soldiers and filtration systems for buildings and vehicles.

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Healthy adults who were close to the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, have less gray matter in key emotion centers of their brains compared with people who were more than 200 miles away, according to a new Human Ecology study.

The study—one of the first to look at the effects of trauma on the brains of healthy adults—follows a Cornell study by the same authors that found people living near the World Trade Center on 9/11 have brains that are more reactive to such emotional stimuli as photographs of fearful faces. Combined, the two studies provide an emerging picture of what happens in the brains of healthy people who experience a traumatic event. Both were conducted by postdoctoral fellow Barbara Ganzel.

The smaller volume of gray matter—composed largely of cells and capillary blood vessels—found was in areas that process emotion and may be, Ganzel said, the brain’s normal response to trauma. The subjects in the study did not suffer from any mental or physical health disorders.

Climate change named No. 1 world crisis by Cornell faculty A new study surveying Cornell’s academic staff on the world’s leading crises found that the No. 1 problem is climate change—a phenomenon not easily reversed. But there’s another important problem that’s much easier to impact: insufficient education in science and critical thinking.

Visiting fellow Derek Cabrera, PhD ’07, a former postdoctoral researcher in the policy analysis and management department, was the lead author on the study, which was published online in Frontiers e-View and will be published in the journal, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

According to the study, almost 300 Cornell faculty members identified the three most important world problems as climate change, corporations having too much influence in governing, and a lack of long-term perspective in political, environmental, and social actions.

The most solvable critical problems? After insufficient education in science, critical thinking, and environmental issues, the Cornell faculty rated the epidemic of preventable illnesses in the Third World and inequitable access to health care as most solvable.

“These results should provide useful practical information for setting interdisciplinary research and policy agendas to address these global crises,” said Cabrera, who is CEO of the Ithaca-based company ThinkWorks. “The world’s problems don’t adhere to disciplinary boundaries, so it is important to understand how scientists from different disciplines view these problems because we will need interdisciplinary teams to solve them.”

The study used “concept mapping”—developed at Cornell in the late 1980s by Cornell professor of policy analysis and management William Trochim—that uses brainstorming, multidimensional sorting, and rating to summarize how a group conceptualizes a topic.

Co-authors James Mandel, Jason Andras, and Marie Nydam are doctoral students in Cornell’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. They teamed up with Cabrera after they had helped organize the course the State of the Planet under the mentorship of faculty members Tom Eisner and Mary Lou Zeeman.

The course, which was offered at Cornell the past two springs, is an interdisciplinary approach to studying the status of the Earth and the crises it faces. The survey is part of an ongoing follow-up to the course. You can learn more at www.whatisthecrisis.org.

Ong honored with early career awards Anthony Ong, assistant professor of human development, has been awarded the 2008 Springer Early Career Achievement Award in Research on Adult Development and Aging from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Adult Development and Aging. This award is given to an individual whose work has made significant early career contributions to understanding critical issues in the psychology of adult development and aging.

Ong is also the recipient of the Margaret M. and Paul B. Baltes Early Career Award from the Gerontological Society of America.

What does psychological science have to do with teaching math? Plenty!

Human development professor Valerie F. Reyna advocated for applying psychological science to improve math and science education in the United States in an editorial published in the June/July 2008 issue of the Association for Psychological Science Observer. Reyna maintained that research on learning processes could dramatically improve the performance of students. www.psychologicalscience.org/ observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2356

New PhD: Human Behavior and Design Cornell will offer a new doctorate in human behavior and design (HBD), the first program of its kind in New York State beginning in the fall 2009.

Offered in the College of Human Ecology’s Department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA), the program will draw on DEA’s specialties in ergonomics; social, cognitive, and environmental psychology; facility planning and management; and interior and industrial design. It will be the only program nationwide that is housed in a department equally represented by social scientists and designers.

“The timing of this program could not be better given the explosion of interest in environmental issues generally, and more specifically, in the relationship between the planning, design and management of the built environment, and health and wellbeing,” said Franklin Becker, DEA department chair.

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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Chih-Chang “C.C.” Chu is working with Cornell researchers in the engineering and medical colleges to develop artificial skin, heart valves, and blood vessels

More than Skin Deep

By Claudia Wheatley

or years researchers have been trying to develop a highfunctioning artificial artery that the human body will accept as its own. The realization of this medical dream may be one step closer, thanks to the pioneering work of College of Human Ecology professor Chih-Chang “C.C.” Chu and a Morgan Seed Grant for Collaborative Multidisciplinary Research in Tissue Engineering.

“To create the perfect artery that could be taken off the shelf and sewn into patients would have a tremendous impact on the longevity and quality of life for patients all around the world,” said vascular surgeon K. Craig Kent.

Cardiovascular disease affects more than 80 million Americans and accounts for one in three deaths each year. Most patients die because of atherosclerosis, in which arteries clogged by fatty plaques aren’t able to maintain adequate blood supply to vital organs like the heart, brain, or kidneys. Negative outcomes, though, can be avoided if the disease is treated before it does irrevocable damage.

Current treatment involves forcing the affected artery open (angioplasty) followed by the placement of a metallic stent or replacing it with an artificial graft or one of the patient’s own veins. But artificial arteries are subject to blood clotting and don’t function very well, particularly in small diameter vessels like the ones in the heart and below the knee. As many as 50 percent of patients don’t have healthy veins to spare—and all three approaches could lead to restenosis, when the affected blood vessel narrows all over again.

As a member of the Weill Cornell Medical College faculty, Kent became interested in the university’s efforts to build partnerships between researchers on the Ithaca and New York City campuses.

In particular, he was intrigued by an incentive called the Morgan Seed Grant for Collaborative Multidisciplinary Research in Tissue Engineering. A gift of Jim and Becky Morgan, graduates of Cornell’s engineering and human ecology colleges, respectively, the program supports the start-up efforts of researchers from both colleges and the medical school who pool their expertise to develop new solutions to medical problems. > > >

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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“The number one reason we are funding the projects extremely easily, and the synergism seemed to be there from is to encourage collaboration between and among the the first time we got them together.” colleges within the university,” said Becky Morgan. The Kent and his associate Bo Liu, associate research professor second reason—and the impetus for championing tissue of cell biology in surgery, found a good match with Chu. engineering—is very personal: the Morgans’ granddaughter “He had developed these really fascinating polymers, and was born with a giant nevus—a blemish that can lead to skin we had intense interest in arteries, in vascular biology,” said cancer—that covered more than one-third of her back. Nevi Kent. “He was just what we needed, and we were just what he can be surgically removed, but extensive skin grafts are often needed, to bring this all together.” needed to cover the excision site, and the options for skin “My research focuses on the treatment of life-threatening grafts are limited. diseases and accidents through the lens of biomaterials and “It’s my hope that between biomedical engineering and the medical devices, and it’s naturally multidisciplinary,” Chu kinds of things that C.C. Chu and others at [the College of said. “I have worked on biodegradable biomaterials since I Human Ecology] are doing came to Cornell in 1978. that we might find a new At that time I could remedy,” said Morgan. count on the fingers of Indeed, one of the one hand how many eight projects receiving people in the United seed grants is an effort to States were working in develop bioengineered skin this area. Now I need tissue that will heal faster to borrow everybody’s and better than current fingers and toes to commercial products. count them. It was really Of the eight projects, unusual for the college three are dependent on and the Department of the work of Chu, the Fiber Science & Apparel Rebecca Q. Morgan ’60 Design to see that this Professor of Fiber Science was a direction they & Apparel Design. Chu is wanted to move into. a preeminent researcher in It took a lot of courage the world of biodegradable and risk by my former biomaterials and tissue colleagues to move into engineering, and the holder this little-known frontier of more than 50 U.S. back in the 1970s. The and international patents college and department stemming from his work. are decades ahead of their Biodegradable peers and are really one biomaterials developed in of the few pioneers in the Chu’s lab have applications field of biodegradable for the treatment of biomaterials for human C.C. Chu and colleague Cynthia Reinhart-King, assistant professor of biomedical wounds, diseased heart body repair.” engineering in the College of Engineering. valves and blood vessels, Chu completed the bone repair, gene transfection for gene therapy, and even vascular graft team with Cynthia Reinhart-King, assistant immunotherapy for cancer patients. And if one of his Morgan professor of biomedical engineering in the College of seed grant projects is successful, Kent and his colleagues could Engineering, whose research focuses on endothelial cells, be one step closer to their colleagues’ wish for an off-the-shelf which line the insides of blood vessels. “Our skill sets are replacement for blocked arteries. really a perfect match,” said Reinhart-King. “He’s a great materials guy, and my expertise is in cell adhesion, particularly the cells that comprise blood vessels.”

A meeting of minds The team’s goal is to replace an artificial artery that’s With the Morgan seed grant in place, the College of Human been in use since Michael DeBakey developed it in 1958.

Ecology, along with the Department of Biomedical Chu hands over a commercial graft sample: it looks like Engineering in the College of Engineering and the a miniature Slinky covered with Gore-Tex. It’s made by Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell College of conventional textile milling,” he said. “The body will try Medicine, held several retreats where researchers from the to react to it—it’s a foreign material—and the healing will Ithaca and New York City campuses described their work never be complete, and blood clotting will set in. That’s why and the kinds of collaboration they were looking for. Grant patients have to take anti-clotting medicine. It can’t be used proposals were rated by outside reviewers with national and to replace narrower arteries, such as those located below the international reputations in tissue engineering. knee or in the heart. And the materials used in artificial grafts “We were interested in scientific merit and synergism are not biodegradable. Once implanted, they remain in the between disciplines,” said Kay Obendorf, senior associate body permanently.” dean of research and graduate education and a professor of The Cornell group’s vascular graft project is designed to fiber science and apparel design. “The teams came together be biologically active and temporary; to act as a scaffold to > > >

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Morgan Seed Grant Projects To date, eight projects have received funding through the Morgan Seed Grant Program. Project objectives range from developing models to aid understanding of disease processes to synthesizing skin, cartilage, and even blood vessels to repair the ravages of disease.

Engineering Physiological Distributions of Zone-Specific Phenotype and Fiber Orientation in a 3-D Tissue Engineering Cartilage Scaffold Objective: To make tissue-engineered cartilage, a key opportunity for the treatment of arthritis. The approach could be used on a wide variety of other tissues as well.

Faculty investigators Brian Kirby (Engineering), Principal investigator Margaret Frey (Human Ecology) Juan Hinestroza (Human Ecology) Lawrence Bonassar (Engineering)

Novel Biodegradable Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering of Blood Vessels Objective: See main article.

Faculty investigators C.C. Chu (Human Ecology), Principal investigator Cynthia Reinhart-King (Engineering) Bo Liu (Weill Cornell Medical College) K. Craig Kent (Weill Cornell Medical College) A Novel Growth Factor and Matrix Mimetic-Enhanced Biodegradable Scaffolds for Skin Tissue Engineering Objective: Develop a new type of biodegradable tissueengineered skin substitute.

Faculty investigators Moonsoo Jin (Engineering), Principal investigator C.C. Chu (Human Ecology) Roger Yurt (Weill Cornell Medical College)

Fiber-Reinforced Tissue Scaffolds with Microfluidic Vascular Templates for Wound Repair and Reconstructive Surgery

Tissue-Engineered Constructs for the Study of the Mechanical Basis of Atherosclerosis Progression

Objective: To build scaffolds that will promote development of replacement tissue that is immunocompatible, versatile, cost effective, mechanically robust, and maintains its volume and function over time.

Objective: To create artificial vascular tissue and to use this model system to identify the mechanical mechanisms underlying blockage or enlargement of arteries.

Faculty investigators Abraham Strook (Engineering), Principal investigator Lawrence Bonassar (Engineering) Margaret Frey (Human Ecology) Jason Spector (Weill Cornell Medical College) A Multidisciplinary Approach for Engineered Heart Valves Using Novel Biomaterials Objective: To engineer a living heart valve replacement that can grow and integrate with patients—a critical need that non-living prosthetic valves are incapable of meeting.

Faculty investigators Jonathan T. Butcher (Engineering), Principal investigator C.C. Chu (Human Ecology) Leonard Girardi (Weill Cornell Medical College) Hod Lipson (Engineering)

Faculty investigators Cynthia Reinhart-King (Engineering), Principal investigator Margaret Frey (Human Ecology) Ageliki Vouyouka (Weill Cornell Medical College) Tissue-Engineered Microenvironmental Niches to Study Human Neural Stem Cell Behavior Objective: To build detailed 3-D models of tissue based on neural stem cells to better understand the origin of brain tumors.

Faculty investigators Claudia Fischback-Teschl (Engineering), Principal investigator Margaret Frey (Human Ecology) John Boockvar (Weill Cornell Medical College)

A Novel Approach For the Prevention of Post-Operative Seroma: Electrospun Polymeric Bioadhesives Objective: To develop a new bioadhesive that can safely and effectively prevent the accumulation of serum in a tissue or organ and the accompanying swelling, which often occurs following surgery.

Faculty investigators David Putnam (Engineering), Principal investigator Margaret Frey (Human Ecology) Jason Spector (Weill Cornell Medical College) Paclitaxel impregnated phenylalanine-based biodegradable PEA nanospheres.

The Cornell Center for Technology Enterprise and Commercialization has filed two U.S. patent applications and two new invention disclosures based on C.C. Chu’s Morgan Seed Grants.

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Nitric oxide derivative impregnated nanofibrous membranes engineered from synthetic biodegradable PEAs.

which blood vessel cells will adhere, ultimately regenerating a new, natural artery. The graft, being biodegradable, would eventually be absorbed by the body. The new biodegradable graft biomaterial would also be biologically active, which means it could actively participate in the wound healing of the graft after surgery.

The materials used to build that scaffold are derived from a family of amino acid-based polymeric biomaterials developed in Chu’s lab in early 2000 that are called polyester amides (PEA). Chu’s lab has successfully engineered and fabricated these PEAs into an astonishing array of purposes. They can be fabricated into fibers; 3-D microporous gels; micro- and nanospheres; or electrospun fabric membranes; they can be positively, negatively, or neutrally charged; they can be hydrophilic or hydrophobic.

Chu runs through some slides of PEA projects in progress.

“We developed this drug-eluding fibrous membrane and Weill Cornell surgeons implanted it into a pig for a second-degree burn trial. It worked out beautifully and healed wound tissue faster and better than a commercial product. Here is another new one for bone generation. The device in this image is a drug-eluding stent that Cornell licenses to a company to develop biodegradable coatings. This new gel biomaterial is intended to carry interleukin 12 for immunotherapy of cancer, and can be engineered to carry vaccines and cells, too.

I envision that these biodegradable 3-D microporous gels may be able to serve as a scaffold for cells to grow into tissues in the future.”

He finds the slides for the artery project. “This tubular graft biomaterial has a nitric oxide derivative,” Chu explained.

Nitric oxide keeps a natural blood vessel dilated. An artificial blood vessel that has built-in nitric oxide could have the potential to ward off restenosis.

“C.C.’s PEA polymer is elastic, in the way that blood vessels are elastic,” said Reinhart-King. “Most grafts and stents fail because the elasticity of the blood vessel doesn’t match the elasticity of the graft, and that can cause the blood vessel to occlude. C.C.’s polymer looks like it might be ideal for the situation.”

Of the eight projects receiving Morgan seed grants, Chu is applying his PEAs to three: one for developing artificial skin, one to produce artificial heart valves, and the blood vessel project.

“We hit the jackpot when we discovered them,” said Chu. “This new family of biodegradable PEA biomaterials might eventually replace the commercial biomaterials introduced in the 1970s.”

The power of partnerships For Kent and Chu, one good collaboration led to another.

“He started wondering if the same polymer could allow genetic material to enter cells—human gene therapy—and we have tremendous experience with gene therapy because that’s one of the things we do in our lab,” said Kent. “So once there was some synergy and symbiosis, we ended up with two

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

different projects.”

According to Chu, his research has “three Ps”—publications, patents, and partnerships—and the gene therapy project best exemplifies his approach.

“The partnership with Kent’s group has led to a joint patent application and joint publications between the Ithaca and Weill campuses,” he said.

“We’re fortunate that the university is making a strong effort to tie the two campuses together, and we’ve found the clinicians down there extremely interested in collaborating,” said Reinhart-King. “Mostly because of enthusiasm for the projects, things are going well.”

Kent agrees. “Medical schools and graduate and undergraduate schools don’t collaborate that much, yet when they do, the potential benefits to medical research are tremendous,” he said. “Someone has to have the foresight to create the ability for partnerships to be formed, and that was accomplished very successfully in our case.”

Seed grants are “extremely important in stimulating research,” said Reinhart-King. “These collaborations probably wouldn’t have occurred without the Morgan seed grant.”

Chu is more emphatic. “If you don’t have a dedicated funding source, everybody does collaboration on an ad hoc basis, and it drags and goes nowhere,” he said firmly. “We don’t have the resources or time to divert to something we’re not responsible for. We need a catalyst to get us started. These eight projects—none of them would happen if we didn’t have the Morgan seed grant. None of them.”

“I am thrilled with the response of the three deans and the assigned professors; with their enthusiasm and support of the collaborations,” said Morgan. A major in textiles and clothing, the precursor to fiber science and apparel design, she’s seen the department evolve in ways she never would have imagined as an undergraduate. “Fibers are a new way of solving problems,” said Morgan. “New kinds of fibers, new uses; I think it’s terribly exciting.”

For Chu, the excitement lies in the development of new knowledge that could have tangible results that will help people. “That is what human ecology is about—dealing with human beings inside and out. We will never be able to see that if we just publish a paper and say ‘That’s it’,” said Chu. “That’s the beauty of this college and this type of multidisciplinary research; in addition to advancing knowledge, we could have real products that benefit real people. If you live long enough, you may benefit from what we’re doing here.” • • •

For more information: Chih-Chang “C.C.” Chu cc62@cornell.edu K. Craig Kent kckent@med.cornell.edu Kay Obendorf sko3@cornell.edu Cynthia Reinhart-King cak57@cornell.edu

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The Immigrant Child: Past, Present, and Future

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By Laura Janka

“The notion of the American dream means that it is attainable for all,” said Sharon Sassler, associate professor of policy analysis and management, during a plenary session for the conference “The Immigrant Child: Past, Present, and Future.”

Whether the American dream is within reach of today’s immigrant children was a focus of one panel at the October conference on campus in Ithaca. The conference addressed such immigrant issues as health care, undocumented immigrants, bilingualism, and how to improve the conditions for immigrant children in New York State and the United States.

In the panel discussion, each speaker talked about what it meant to live the American dream and whether this notion was plausible for historical and contemporary immigrant families.

“The conference was unique because it was so interdisciplinary and it was organized around the idea that history matters—that there is a relationship between the contemporary experience of ‘new immigrants’ and those who came in the late 19th and early 20th century,” said conference organizer and Cornell professor emerita Joan Brumberg. Each session was organized to provoke dialogue among scholars, service providers, educators, and concerned citizens and was framed by a historian, followed by practitioners and researchers. Over 40 educational institutions were represented at the conference, as well as more than 20 organizations serving immigrant children and families.

Noted Sassler during the panel discussion: “There is a continuity in some of the challenges that immigrants historically faced and that contemporary immigrants face that are complicated by our more sophisticated lifestyle.”

She wondered whether contemporary immigrants would have the same opportunity to assimilate that prior

generations had, especially as more undocumented immigrants are denied political representation.

Panelists Pilar Parra, senior lecturer in nutritional sciences, and Sofia Villenas, associate professor of education and Latino studies education, discussed schools as a tool for immigrant children’s assimilation into American culture. Parra stressed parent participation in such programs as the PTA, and said that this familial support in education leads to economic and political betterment. Villenas explained that a personal relationship between parents and teachers allows immigrant students’ needs to be known and met.

Panelist Shelley Wong, associate professor of English and Asian American studies, asked, “What is the difference between assimilating something and assimilating into something?” Raised in a Chinese-speaking household, Wong told a story of once asking for chopsticks when she meant Chapstick to illustrate that “language acquisition or facility or fluency in a language certainly does not guarantee by any means a particular kind of belonging.”

Echoing the importance of English as a means to obtaining health care, education, and career opportunities, Wong noted, however, how the native tongue is a cultural comfort for

immigrants, which should not be lost in monolingual-nationalistic attitudes.

Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, associate professor of development sociology and a native of South Africa, noted that his own teenage daughter faces difficulties of assimilation and how society wants immigrant children to be “cultural chameleons.” Unlike past generations, he said, today’s immigrant children are expected to represent a multicultural American society as well as their native nation.

Panelist Sivilay Somchanhmavong, coordinator of multicultural recruitment in Cornell’s Office of Admissions, also shared his personal story. As a successful English as a Second Language student, he reinforced the importance of strong primary education as a step toward secondary education opportunities. Of Laotian descent, Somchanhmavong spoke passionately of the need to increase representation of Southeast Asian minorities at both the high school and university levels.

The conference was hosted by Cornell’s Family Life Development Center and supported in part by the New York Council for the Humanities. • • •

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

William Trochim and his colleagues develop evaluation systems for huge and complex organizations, helping researchers, educators, and public employees to implement programs that address society’s challenges

Designing Evaluation Systems Based on Empirical Evidence

By Liz Bauman

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All of us—whether educators, researchers, health care providers, or just taxpayers— want to know that our time, effort, and money are well spent and will bring the results we desire. And the same can be said for the vast number of programs and activities carried out by schools, research institutions, community organizations, and state and federal agencies.

“While we hope that programs are selected for and survive using rational criteria, in many situations they probably survive because people like them, get used to them, or because institutional, political, or economic forces favor their survival,” said William Trochim.

Trochim is a professor in the college’s Department of Policy Analysis and Management and a national leader in designing evaluation systems that help assess how programs function and examine whether they are actually accomplishing their intended goals. He is leading an innovative effort to develop evaluation approaches that are based on evolutionary theory from the life sciences. Trochim argues that evaluation can play a key role in both developing program variations and in providing feedback that influences selection, just as natural selection does in biological evolution.

“Like evolutionary theory, evaluation can encourage program managers, decisionmakers, and policymakers to use a ‘trialand-error’ approach to evolving better

programs that have a greater ‘fitness’ to their environment,” he said. Trochim is creating such evolutionary evaluation systems and testing them in real-world contexts.

The ecology of science Trochim’s work is at the intersection of science and human ecology.

“We live in a dynamic world, with complex systems of human organizations,” he said.

“I am an ecological systems thinker, and evaluation is a central human ecological function. It is essential to learning, because evaluation provides feedback about whether and how the things we create actually work.”

As we look to science to try to solve the major problems our society faces, Trochim said we need to realize that “basically, science is a human social endeavor—and that is where human ecology becomes absolutely essential to its success in the 21st century.”

Trochim, who has been on the Human Ecology faculty since 1980, has many roles at the college and beyond. He directs the Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation (CORE), a team that includes CORE manager Claire Hebberd and that works to develop evaluation systems for large and complex organizations and scientific endeavors. Trochim is the director of evaluation for the new Clinical and Translational Science Center, based at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

He is also the director of evaluation for Extension and Outreach at Cornell, as well > > >

Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

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as the principal investigator on a new grant to develop the next generation of evaluation approaches for assessing and improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and outreach programs funded by the National Science Foundation. Currently, Trochim is also serving as president of the American Evaluation Association.

“My life is a continuous triangle trip between Ithaca, New York, and Washington,” he said with a laugh.

From basic biomedical science to the bedside and beyond In the last few years it has become clear that massive investments in biomedical research have not translated into desired health outcomes, according to Trochim. On average, it takes 17 years from the time a new medical treatment or device is discovered until it’s used widely in practice and “that’s almost certainly a lower-end estimate.”

“That’s a system problem,” he said. “We have systems of researchers and systems of health care practitioners, but we haven’t been successful in connecting them effectively.”

Earlier on, biomedical researchers attempted to better disseminate the information about new discoveries—“we shouted louder,” as Trochim put it—but that didn’t significantly improve the time it took to move discoveries from lab bench to bedside and beyond to health impacts.

In the past three years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created the Clinical and Translational Science Awards to form a network of 60 centers nationwide with the ultimate goal of enhancing research translation to improve public health. Weill Cornell Medical College received $49 million from the NIH to lead a center in New York City. Called the

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC), it is a multidisciplinary collaboration among biomedical research institutions on the city’s Upper East Side, including Weill Cornell, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Hospital for Special Surgery, Hunter College, and Cornell in Ithaca.

Each center was required to develop an evaluation system.

Trochim and his colleague, Cathleen Kane, the CTSC manager of evaluation, along with Julianne ImperatoMcGinley, CTSC’s principal investigator, worked to develop systems to evaluate what works in translating biomedical research into clinical practice. The CTSC is encouraging cross-institutional collaboration and trying to break down disciplinary and specialization silos. It is organized into 11 key functions concerned with everything from ethical and regulatory issues, novel and pilot research, clinical services, community engagement, and educating the next generation of medical researchers.

“If we approach this only from a biomedical perspective, we won’t get the translation of research to practice that we need,” Trochim said. He and others expect that by connecting more directly with community and patient interests, scientists can be encouraged to apply their research to issues more directly relevant to society’s needs, such as vaccines for infectious diseases or the problem of widespread tobacco use.

The center’s staff is in the process of developing working relationships throughout New York City’s diverse communities. Trochim and his colleagues will be asking practitioners and patients in community-based settings to articulate their health and medical needs and impediments to accessing health care.

“There is a pressing need for broad-based multidisciplinary

“Like evolutionary theory, evaluation can encourage program managers, decision-makers, and policymakers to use a ‘trial-and-error’ approach to evolving better programs that have a ‘fitness’ to their environment.”

—WilliamTrochim

collaborations that can fulfill the incredible promise of recent research advances in areas like genetics and bioinformatics, and efficiently translate them into real-world interventions that benefit the community,” said David Skorton, president of Cornell University and professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Evaluating extension’s efforts For Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) educators to better develop, implement, and assess their thousands of programs across New York State, they recognized the need for improved evaluation and feedback mechanisms. As director of evaluation for Extension and Outreach at Cornell, Trochim is working with Helene Dillard, director of CCE; Mike Duttweiler, assistant director of CCE; and Monica Hargraves, manager of evaluation. They have created a “system evaluation protocol” that facilitates essential evaluation steps, gathers information from all of CCE’s efforts, and feeds it back to people beyond the local context, so that they can learn from each other.

“If people follow the steps in the protocol, they will generate higher-quality and more appropriate evaluations for their programs. We’re trying to create a generic protocol that can be used in any evaluation context,” Trochim said.

Pilot testing for the protocol began two years ago at CCE’s New York City office with 24 programs. Last year, Trochim expanded the pilot testing to six more counties: Chenango, Jefferson, Onondaga, St. Lawrence, Tompkins, and Ulster.

To implement the new protocol, Trochim realized they needed to design a novel cyber infrastructure to communicate across program areas and around the state. Thus was born the “Netway,” short for “networked pathways.” (Pathway evaluation models show which inputs or activities lead to which results and impacts.) To date, staff members in these first six counties and New York City have created pathway models for 50 programs. According to Trochim, Netway allows users to see other people’s models and use ideas from those to create new programs, activities, and outcomes.

“The more users you get, like with Wikipedia or YouTube, the greater the dynamic interactions, so you can connect people doing programs who wouldn’t find each other otherwise,” he said. “We’re trying to network an essential architecture of evaluation and program thinking for the 21st century.”

Getting to the root of STEM The first phase of Netway development attracted attention and a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Trochim has just received a second NSF grant ($2.3 million for five years) to take his cyber infrastructure and evaluation systems to the next level: to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education nationwide.

“The NSF and Congress have become extremely interested in how science integrates with our society,” said Trochim.

Thus, the NSF is funding Materials Research, Science, and Engineering Centers to enhance the broader impact science has on society and to draw in the next generation of scientists.

Trochim and Jennifer Brown Urban, who received her PhD in the college’s field of human development last year, had earlier applied their evaluation systems to the Cornell Center for Materials Research, one of these centers. Now, they will be partnering with the Cornell center to extend these approaches to some 27 centers and beyond. In the process of doing this, they will be developing a virtual evaluation protocol that any organization can use to develop better evaluation systems on their own with the cyber infrastructure and resources developed at Cornell.

The NSF grant also funds work that begins this year in which Trochim and his team will build an evaluation system for Cooperative Extension’s 4-H STEM education programs.

More sensible and sensitive evaluation As president of the American Evaluation Association, Trochim is encouraging the evolution, understanding, and awareness of the field of evaluation in our society. He is especially trying to influence how the federal government evaluates its myriad programs.

Currently, he said, federal agencies don’t have coherent evaluation systems. He explains that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees every program in every federal agency, had implemented a new evaluation system called Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) several years ago. The system was poorly conceived, especially in its evaluation requirements and guidelines, and met with considerable controversy and resistance, Trochim said. He is now working with the OMB to develop improved and more sensible evaluation guidelines and approaches. He sees the impacts of this effort as considerable, because it cuts across the entire federal government.

“We bring in evolutionary and systems thinking in our efforts at Cornell to create better evaluation approaches that can be scaled to different sizes and types of organizations and are sensible and sensitive to the needs of different programs,” he said.

In all his roles, Trochim is creating and evolving new methods and resources for evaluation. He is testing his new approaches in many practical and interdisciplinary contexts, while developing the technologies and systems to support them.

Trochim said that the college is the right place for him and his research in evaluation systems: “The College of Human Ecology represents a diversity of fields and specialties and has a strong emphasis on their use in real-world contexts. This is ideal for the kind of work we’re doing in evaluation. Dean Alan Mathios and his staff have been incredibly supportive of this work and recognize its importance for the future of the college and our society.” • • •

For more information: William Trochim wmt1@cornell.edu

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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Cornell Population Program Spans Domestic and International Issues

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By Sheri Hall

What role do grandparents play in the lives of children in the United States today? How do advertisements for food products impact consumption and ultimately obesity in our society? Do poverty levels affect reproductive health among people living in Africa? How do older persons who move reestablish their social relationships, and how does this affect their health and well-being?

Faculty affiliated with the Cornell Population Program (CPP)—a universitywide multidisciplinary program with strong support from the College of Human Ecology (34 of the CPP affiliates are from the college) and spanning 16 Cornell departments—are studying these topics and dozens more.

The center acts as a hub for research connected to population trends, bringing together faculty to share ideas and providing access to resources including data sets, training in using statistical methodologies, and help with preparing and submitting grant proposals. It’s an example of the college’s efforts to promote multidisciplinary and intercollege initiatives.

“The idea is to break down barriers and encourage people

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Multidisciplinary program delves beyond basic demographics to understand their impact and improve people’s lives

H. Elizabeth Peters, director of the Cornell Population Program (CPP) and a professor of policy analysis and management; Robert Strawderman, director of CPP’s statistics core and a professor of statistics; William Block, director of CPP’s computing core and director of CISER; and David Brown, associate director of CPP and a professor of development sociology.

from different academic backgrounds and areas of expertise to work together,” said Alan Mathios, Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology. “I believe these collaborations are where the major breakthroughs happen.”

The program received a major boost this year with a $1.15 million grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch.

“It’s a concrete step toward elevating Cornell’s profile within the national demographic community,” said H. Elizabeth Peters, director of the CPP and a professor of policy analysis and management. “And it’s a validation of our excellent faculty, graduate students, and research.”

The additional funding—awarded annually to a new program that shows promise of becoming a leading population research center—will also help bridge the worlds of theoretical and applied scholarship, said David Harris, Cornell’s deputy provost and vice provost for social sciences.

“It’s very exciting to have the opportunity to build on our demographic program and lend a new dimension to dozens of programs across campus,” said Harris, who is on the CPP’s executive board.

More than birth, death, and migration rates The CPP was established in 2007 to encourage crossdisciplinary innovation, boost research funding, and improve interdisciplinary training. The center is housed at Cornell’s Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center (BLCC) and has 71 faculty members and research associates from across campus.

In addition to the NIH grant, the CPP is funded by a seed grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for the Social Sciences, which includes support from the colleges of human ecology, agriculture

and life sciences, arts and sciences, and the ILR School. And the BLCC and CPP provide matching grants, cost sharing, and other financial and administrative services to support the research of CPP affiliates.

“We’re bringing social science researchers from across the university to an intellectual home to spark collaborations that wouldn’t otherwise happen,” said Dan Lichter, director of the BLCC, director of the CPP’s development core, a sociology professor, and the Ferris Family Professor of Policy Analysis and Management.

That means delving deeper than just the birth, death, and migration rates that are traditionally associated with the field of demographics, Peters explained.

“We start with measuring the basic descriptors of our population, but now it’s more about understanding the impact of these trends on people’s lives,” she said. “So if you’re looking at the aging of the population, what does that mean in terms of housing and the health care system and the workforce?”

In fact, many of the CPP’s affiliates probably don’t consider themselves demographers at all, said David Brown, professor of development sociology and associate director of the CPP. “Quite a number of our affiliates don’t identify themselves as demographers, they identify themselves as social scientists with an interest in how population trends affect and are affected by social and economic change,” he said.

The program focuses on three broad areas: families and children, health behaviors and disparities, and poverty and inequality. For each of these areas, it spans both domestic and international issues.

“We have groups of researchers working in the developed country context, and different groups of researchers working in developing countries, often on overlapping issues,” Peters said. > > >

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“The population program brings them together and helps them benefit from the knowledge each has to offer.”

Opening new doors for researchers In addition to providing a social network, the CPP offers a wide variety of services that will ultimately improve the quality of social science research at Cornell and help the university secure additional funding.

“We’re expecting that Cornell will submit a larger number of grant proposals focused on human population dynamics,” Brown said. “By conducting more research and better research, Cornell is much more likely to have an impact on public policy discussions.”

The CPP services are organized into four areas or “cores”— the administrative core, the computing core, the statistics core, and the development core.

The administrative core, led by Peters and Brown, organizes seminars and training sessions for CPP affiliates and helps researchers prepare grant proposals and manage grants.

The computing core is directed by William Block, director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER). It provides large-scale computational services, helps researchers manage statistical databases, and offers access to unique sets of demographic data including restricted-access census data only available at nine institutes across the nation.

“It’s quite an advantage to have access to these large data sets while you’re sitting right here in Ithaca,” Block said. “The CPP is giving Cornell a focus on population data that we didn’t have before, and that’s going to open up new doors for dozens of researchers.”

The statistical core is headed by Robert Strawderman, professor of statistics. This core aids in development and application of statistical methodologies appropriate for addressing the increasingly complex demographic questions being explored by population researchers, offers statistical workshops and consultation, and will help facilitate productive collaborations between CPP affiliates and statistics faculty.

And the development core, led by the BLCC’s Lichter, provides seed grants and offers workshops to promote new grant proposals and helps young scholars develop the skills and knowledge they need to become the leading researchers of the future.

In addition, the program is in the process of developing a campuswide graduate minor in demography.

“We’ll be training a whole new generation of population researchers,” Peters said. “In the short term, they’ll be able to assist faculty with research, which will open the door For more information: to new funding William Block opportunities. And in block@cornell.edu the long term, they’ll David Brown go out into the dlb17@cornell.edu world with a greater David Harris understanding of deputyprovost@cornell.edu how these population Daniel Lichter changes impact dtl28@cornell.edu people’s lives.” • • • H. Elizabeth Peters ep22@cornell.edu

Robert Strawderman rls54@cornell.edu

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Nearly 600 community professionals take part in live broadcast

Live Broadcast Role of Chaos Development

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By Sheri Hall

Chaos in the forms of noise, crowding, and shifting family dynamics is harmful to children’s development and disproportionately impacts low-income and minority families, according to research by three Human Ecology professors working to educate community professionals on this phenomenon and how to address it.

This summer, the college hosted a videoconference to inform nearly 600 community professionals at 13 sites across the state of New York about the problem of chaos in families and how to address it.

The live broadcast titled “Children and Chaos: How Chaotic Environmental Settings Influence Human Development from Infancy through Adolescence” featured the research of three faculty members: Dan Lichter, professor of policy analysis and management and director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center; Elaine Wethington, associate professor of human development and co-principal investigator for the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging; and Gary Evans, professor of design and environmental analysis and human development.

The event was unique because it melded research from psychology, demography, and sociology for a diverse audience that included representatives from schools, health care organizations, the court system, and the foster care system.

“It’s a problem that reaches across disciplines and across communities,” said Evans, one of the event organizers.

Historically, U.S. children have experienced chaos for decades due to the nation’s high rates of migration, poverty, and maternal and child mortality. But today, chaos in children’s lives is largely on the family level.

“Children are affected by the divorce and remarriage of their parents, higher rates

Discusses in Children’s

Gary Evans, professor of human development and design and environmental analysis, speaks during a live video broadcast “Children and Chaos,” sponsored by the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center.

of maternal employment, and the fast pace of modern life,” Lichter explained.

These disproportionate effects on low-income and minority children contribute to the cycle of poverty in our nation, Evans said. His research shows that chaos—specifically crowding, excessive noise, less structured and predictable household routines, as well as geographic instability—is linked closely to economic status, with poorer families experiencing more chaos.

For example, he said, lower-income families are five times more likely to experience divorce and six times more likely to have unpredictable work schedules.

In addition, lower-income communities are on average 10–15 decibels louder—or twice as loud—as middle-class communities. Evans’ research has shown that children living in noisy communities are more likely to suffer from deficits in reading.

“There’s a convergence of these different issues that creates problems for children living in poverty,” he said. “Children need to learn they can have an impact on their environment.

In chaos, that’s difficult to learn because they lose the sense of control over their environment.”

Wethington’s work has identified several red flags that indicate children are experiencing too much chaos in their lives: • a lack of routine in parents’ schedules; • a lack of routine in the child’s eating and sleeping schedule; • time spent unsupervised; and • a lack of cheerfulness or energy.

“We need local solutions that involve schools and parents,” Wethington told the audience.

The videoconference was based on materials presented at the first biennial Bronfenbrenner Conference on the Ecology of Human Development held in Ithaca in October 2007.

The three-day seminar attracted researchers and authors from across the globe to discuss how chaos influences human development. Papers written for the conference are also scheduled to be published in a book in 2009.

Other co-sponsors of the videoconference include the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center, the Parenting in Context Project, and Cornell Cooperative Extension.

The video broadcast and downloadable research briefs are available at www.parenting.cit.cornell.edu/events.html.

Follow the link to archived webcasts. • • •

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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Human Ecology faculty lend their expertise to universitywide initiative examining poverty dynamics

‘Ignore the Poor at Your Own Peril’

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by Metta Winter

It was January of 1964 when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty to address the fact that 19 percent of the citizens in the world’s richest country were living below the poverty line. Forty-five years later 20 percent still do so. And today the poor are even further behind when comparing their income to that of the “average” American.

“We had a war on poverty and poverty won,” said Daniel Lichter, the Ferris Family Professor in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center.

Look around the world and the picture is similar, according to Christopher B. Barrett, the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. In other high-income countries, the numbers of poor people are large and have remained constantly so over the past generation. In the developing world, the number of Africans living on less than $1.00 a day has doubled in that time. There are more poor people in Latin America than a generation ago, and even the rapidly growing economies of south Asia have left hundreds of millions in extreme poverty. Only in east and southeast Asia have the numbers of people suffering abject poverty fallen in the past generation.

Barrett is directing the Persistent Poverty and Upward Mobility Project, a three-year campuswide initiative in Cornell’s Institute for Social Sciences (ISS) that is investigating “poverty traps” and how to transform ineffective programs aimed at releasing the poor from the bonds of ongoing deprivation. When Barrett began looking for individuals with the expertise and experience to join this effort and solidify Cornell’s reputation as a preeminent place for research on poverty, he turned to faculty in the College of Human Ecology.

One of the first people he approached was nutrition professor Christine Olson.

“The idea of applying the best social science Cornell had to offer to this real-world problem fascinated me right from the start,” said Olson, a nutritionist also trained in sociology who has spent 30 years addressing the dynamics of poverty in rural America—most recently the interrelationship between food insecurity and health and how those factors may constrain people from becoming upwardly mobile.

Another call was made to Jordan Matsudaira. Matsudaira arrived in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management in the fall 2007 after completing a Robert Wood Johnson Post-doctoral Fellowship in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s a labor economist with special expertise in quantitative research design and causal inference. Much of his work focuses on urban poverty and > > >

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such issues as how welfare programs might be designed and education systems transformed to help improve the lives of poor children.

“I immediately saw the possibility of theoretical advances in the way we think about poverty and how those advances could inform interventions on the ground” said Matsudaira who, as a new faculty member, also recognizes the value of this opportunity to exchange ideas with scholars and citizens across disciplinary and geographic perspectives.

Olson and Matsudaira agreed to join Barrett and Stephen L. Morgan, an associate professor in the sociology department, as core team members in framing the project proposal, which was ultimately chosen in a highly competitive selection process as the ISS theme project for 2008 to 2011.

Soon after two other Human Ecology college faculty were competitively selected as the project team members—Daniel Lichter from the Department of Policy Analysis and Management and David Sahn from the Division of Nutritional Sciences.

“There’s never been as much interest in inequality in policy circles as there is now,” said Lichter, a noted demographer who has studied issues of poverty and inequality for 25 years, “especially in the growing gap between the rich and poor.”

David Sahn, the International Professor of Economics in the college’s Division of Nutritional Sciences and a professor in the economics department in the College of Arts and Sciences, has spent 30 years investigating the determinants and causes of poverty and inequality and related outcomes such as health, nutrition, and education in developing countries, particularly those in Africa.

He was a member of the Cornell Social Sciences Advisory Committee that Poverty measurement. conceived of ISS before it was formally established in 2004. Sahn sees the institute as enormously successful in meeting its goals of encouraging collaborations among social scientists across disciplinary and institutional boundaries so as to generate new discoveries and to stimulate provocative conversations among scholars and citizens inside and outside the Cornell community on complex topics in the social sciences.

Collaborative model ISS is modeled after Cornell’s Society for the Humanities and advanced research centers at the universities of California and Michigan. What’s different and unique about the institute is its thematic approach. Each year faculty across campus are invited to submit theme project proposals, with three years to plan, put into action, and complete them.

At the core of each project is social science research that will attract attention from national and international academic communities as well as private and government funding agencies. Each theme project challenges those within and beyond Cornell to look anew at critical issues in the social sciences and reconsider their own scholarly perspectives.

“In complex problems, it is rare that a single investigator, or even a team of investigators from a single disciplinary tradition, can really come up with a convincing package of findings that present workable solutions,” explained Barrett of why he proposed examining persistent poverty as an ISS

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

theme project. “The collaborative, interdisciplinary team approach provides a more holistic package that is more readily communicable to a wide range of outside stakeholders and is less likely to have made fatal, herculean assumptions that will prove its downfall.”

Project members will focus on the experiences, histories, and future prospects of poor individuals, households, and communities both within the United States and abroad. Some of the research questions to be examined revolve around the role of human capital—health, nutritional status, and education—in helping or impeding people’s exit from poverty.

For example, it is known that obese women are discriminated against in the workforce. Olson will look at the relationship between childhood poverty and adult obesity, particularly as it might impact the future upward mobility of girls and young women.

Matsudaira wants to know more about how school policies affect economic prospects later in life for those who immigrate while they are young and still in school. For example, how does bilingual education affect their school achievement and, subsequently, their economic circumstances later in life?

Sahn, too, is interested in education and health. In his case, he will focus on the education of young women in Madagascar and Senegal. How, he wants to know, does the availability of education and quality of schools and home environment for young girls influence the opportunities and choices they make as they transition into adulthood, and how those will, in turn, impact their success in the workplace and their decisions regarding marriage and fertility, and the subsequent health of their children?

Lichter will focus on economic mobility, particularly between generations. Why is it, he asks, that some poor people—based on their own ambition and ability—move forward while others remain trapped by their unfavorable circumstances (such as being raised by a single parent or growing up in a high-risk neighborhood) and reproduce the poverty experience of their parents?

The project’s members will have varying responsibilities.

Olson, who was involved in the initial development of questions assessing food insecurity for the Current Population Survey (conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to provide a snapshot of the nation’s economic health), will provide leadership in the area of developing accurate measures of other nonmonetary For more information: deprivations associated Christopher Barrett with poverty. She’ll also cbb2@cornell.edu bring nearly 30 years of Daniel Lichter experience in designing dtl28@cornell.edu outreach programs for Jordan Matsudaira low-income populations jdm296@cornell.edu for Cornell Cooperative Christine Olson Extension. cmo3@cornell.edu “Because of this I’m David Sahn able to evaluate from David.Sahn@cornell.edu an on-the-ground perspective whether the

proposed solutions that come from theoretical models have any potential for really working,” Olson said.

With his expertise in policy analysis and causal inference, Matsudaira will endeavor to keep discussions practical and focused on determining those public policy levers that hold the most promise to be effective. He is also keen to take many of the examples of well (and of poorly) designed studies that are identified in the project and incorporate those into his undergraduate class Causal Reasoning and Policy Evaluation and graduate seminar Empirical Strategies for Policy Analysis.

“The research design you bring to an analysis crucially affects the conclusions you draw and whether those are valid,” explained Matsudaira, adding that while there have been thousands of studies on poverty, many proved useless due to fundamentally flawed designs.

A hallmark of ISS is its international scope, according to Beta Mannix, the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Management at the Johnson School and the vice provost for equality and inclusion who is also finishing up her term as director of the institute this semester. “One thing that is new to the social sciences at Cornell is the need to work across the world to understand what’s happening cross culturally.”

Sahn anticipates a high degree of synergy to result from interactions between the domestic and internationally focused participants in the project. “To be able to spend time with an excellent demographer like Dan [Lichter] in terms of identifying questions and problems that arise out of his experience in the United States may be quite relevant or provocative in a developing country context,” he said.

Harnessing Cornell’s expertise Collaborating with other Cornell programs concerned with the well-being of individuals is an integral part of this ISS project. The Cornell Population Program, located in the Bronfenbrenner Family Life Course Center, is one. The Center for Social Inequality, directed by Stephen Morgan, is another. And the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future (CCSF) is a third.

The Cornell Population Program was established through a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Lichter’s guidance. He’d created two such NIH-funded demographic centers before, one at the Pennsylvania State University and the other at Ohio State. Rectifying inequality and relieving poverty, both domestically and globally, is one of the center’s main pursuits.

As to the Center for Social Inequality, Lichter expects close ties to its education mission through team teaching, practicums, and films for undergraduates. “Increasingly more affluent people, like most of our students, are separated geographically, culturally, and socially from people who aren’t so affluent and consequently don’t always appreciate the problems people with low incomes have,” he said.

The newly established Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future brokers partnerships between Cornell faculty and external partners in the areas of energy, the environment, and economic development.

“CCSF has a core objective of helping find environmentally sustainable means of bringing a brighter future to the billions who presently and unnecessarily suffer low standards of living in a rich world. The shared vision is, in this circumstance, considerable,” said Barrett, who is the center’s associate director for economic development programs.

Cornell has 600 social scientists and ISS works with more than 80 units and departments across campus. During the three years of the project, it’s anticipated that Cornell’s faculty

and distinguished scholars will participate in research projects, seminars, lectures, conferences, and team-teach courses with scholars, government officials, and members of nonprofit organizations from across the nation and around the world.

And, perhaps, as Lichter notes, build a poverty research center here at Cornell.

All four of the Human Ecology college faculty members serving on the project are committed to creating outreach activities that help educate political leaders and the public-atlarge—to bring home the harsh realities of the gap between the rich and poor citizens of the United States that is greater than at any time since the Great Depression.

“If people in America are worried about their security, whether it be economic security or their physical well-being due to terrorism, disease, or political incivility, then, as they say in rural Africa, ‘Ignore the poor at your own peril,’” said Sahn. •

••

Water Cooler Conversations

“The sad truth is that most of the faculty at this university are so busy doing their own work that they can have colleagues down the hall who have great ideas and if they only had a moment to talk to each other they could see how their ideas might be synergistic and what would result would be better than what either one is working on alone,” said nutrition professor Christine Olson.

Putting renowned faculty next door to each other and giving them greater opportunity to interact is exactly what will happen to the team members of the Persistent Poverty and Upward Mobility Project. During the middle of the three project years, its 10 members will have offices together in Myron Taylor Hall, where they’ll spend half their time.

Olson is confident that during the year there will be many informal conversations resulting in “’I never thought of it that way’ flashes. Such moments of thinking anew build relationships between people that will cause them to write proposals and articles, and generate new ideas that will generate new funding for the university.”

Persistent Poverty and Upward Mobility Project Team Members Christopher B. Barrett (Applied Economics and Management) Christopher J. Anderson (Government) Susan Christopherson (City and Regional Planning) Matthew Freedman (ILR Labor Economics) Daniel Lichter (Policy Analysis and Management and Sociology) Jordan Matsudaira (Policy Analysis and Management) Stephen Morgan (Sociology) Christine Olson (Nutritional Sciences) David Sahn (Nutritional Sciences and Economics) Nic van de Walle (Government) Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

New program brings a scientific eye to the law

Legal Eagles

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By Sheri Hall

Researchers from Cornell’s Law, Psychology, and Human Development (LPHD) Program are influencing judicial decisions across the nation, including a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The multidisciplinary program launched in 2007 brings together Human Ecology faculty from the Department of Human Development, the Department of Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Cornell Law School.

Together, they study how human psychological processes such as memory, perception, judgment, and decision-making play out in the law.

“There are a lot of illusions and foibles in human judgment and decision making,” said Charles Brainerd, the program’s director and a professor of human development. “It’s likely these affect and infect the criminal justice system. It’s something we as a society need to better understand.”

Programs focused on psychology in the criminal justice system aren’t new. Dozens of law schools around the country offer concentrations for those who plan to work in the courts. But the Cornell program stands out because it is the only one focused on research.

“Our program relates to the field of law like biology relates to medicine—it’s the basic science of the law,” Brainerd explained.

The idea is to use data to influence how the criminal justice system functions. Why’s that important? Take, for example, the investigative aspect of the law.

“It pretty much solely relies on memory,” Brainerd said. “Forensic evidence is gathered in less than 10 percent of the felony cases in

the United States, and it’s only processed to a standard that can be used in half of those.”

That means 95 percent of felony cases have no tangible evidence like fingerprints or DNA samples.

“So what’s left? It’s what comes out of people’s mouths. And what’s that? Memory mixed with judgment and reasoning,” he said. “It’s very important to understand how memory works in these situations and what conditions are likely to produce the most accurate memories.”

Applications across the spectrum Brainerd can offer similar examples of how the program’s research applies to nearly every stage within the criminal justice system.

“You can think of it as a stream that starts with the crime—why do people make the decision to break the law?—and follows all the way along the process to the investigation, the charging of the crime, the trial, conviction, punishment, and appeal,” he said. “We have people who work through that whole spectrum.”

Valerie Reyna, professor of human development and psychology, works at the very beginning of that spectrum. She is an expert on risky decision making among adolescents— essentially why young people are more likely to commit and to become the victims of crime.

“The common sense notion is that adolescents think they are immortal. But if you look at the facts, that turns out to be completely false,” she said. “Most adolescents do a very good job of balancing risks and rewards—they just see the risks as being ‘worth it.’ > > >

U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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“So when an adolescent hears the statistic that if you have unprotected sex, there’s a less than 1 percent chance you’ll contract the HIV virus—what they see is that more than 99 percent of the time, you can beat it,” she said. “For an adult, that’s still not worth it.”

Adolescents also don’t draw the same conclusions as adults do when given a set of circumstances, Reyna explained. “If I say just four words to an adult—‘prom night’ and ‘hotel room’—they automatically think of a potentially dangerous situation. But most adolescents wouldn’t foresee potential problems there.”

Moving along the spectrum, some of Brainerd’s own research focuses on memory and cognition, specifically how they relate to eyewitness testimony. In a case earlier this year— State of Missouri v. Daniel Coleman—Brainerd presented scientific evidence about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony in a pre-trial hearing. Brainerd’s testimony led the judge to throw out the unreliable eyewitness identification in the case, which could have led to a false conviction.

“The case was precedent-setting because it appears to be the first time that an eyewitness identification was suppressed in Missouri on the basis of psychological research,” Brainerd said.

And it was research by Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in Human Development, which was cited this year in the U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Louisiana. In the case, the state of Louisiana wanted to sentence Patrick Kennedy to death for raping a child.

The court ruled that a state could not punish the crime of raping a child with the death penalty. In their decision, they cited Ceci’s research on the suggestibility of child witnesses.

“Part of the case was built on the child’s testimony,” Ceci explained. “The Supreme Court argued that the death penalty needed to be reserved for cases with no mitigating circumstances, and they viewed the age of the child as a mitigating circumstance.”

Cornell researchers are also focused on providing a voice for child victims of crime in the courts. Children’s testimony often used to be ignored in the legal system, but advances in knowledge about accurate interviewing techniques make it possible to gather reliable evidence from children.

The other 12 LPHD faculty are experts on different topics

within the field of For more information: law. For example, Charles Brainerd Jeffrey Rachlinski, cb299@cornell.edu professor of law, Stephen Ceci studies the factors sjc9@cornell.edu that influence Valerie Reyna judicial decision vr53@cornell.edu making. And John Blume, professor of law and director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, conducts research on the psychology of the death penalty.

“The research is oriented around critical societal needs,” Brainerd said. “It’s exactly the kind of research the courts need to sift through evidence and make decisions.”

The next generation In addition to having an impact on the criminal justice system today, the LPHD program takes seriously its teaching mission.

“We’re looking to train the next generation of psycho-legal researchers,” Ceci said. “The whole movement in law in the last decade is what they call empirical law, which is founded in research. The days of debating over the hypothetical are over.

The idea now is to collect data that supports your decisions.

We need to convey that to students and encourage them to continue this research.”

The program currently offers a PhD concentration, which allows students to get an advanced degree in human development or psychology.

“It’s really good for our graduate students because it exposes them to all of these experts, and they can take courses in the law school much more easily,” Brainerd said.

In addition, a proposal is pending to add a dual degree for students interested in a JD and a PhD. While the main focus is on graduate studies and research, the LPHD faculty also offer a large series of undergraduate courses such as Children and the Law, Social and Psychological Aspects of the Death Penalty, Risk and Rational Decision Making, and Memory and the Law. “For undergraduate students who want to go into this area, they would be crazy not to come here,” Brainerd said. “You can actually take a large number of courses in the law area as an undergraduate, and that’s unique.”

As the program matures, there are plans to expand into other areas as well. A distinguished speaker series will bring top scientists to Cornell this academic year. And if all goes as planned, the program hopes to begin admitting candidates for the joint law and PhD degree in the fall of 2010.

“There’s a level of excitement and ground swell that didn’t exist before,” Ceci said. • • This illustration shows the Roman two-faced god, Janus, on trial. Symbolically, his bearded, mature head speaks to judges of yore while the young boy’s head is turned toward the judge of the future.

Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation.

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Researchers: Every $1 Invested in New York Nutrition Program Reduces Participants’ Health Care Costs by $10

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By Sheri Hall

Two participants in an EFNEP program in New York City demonstrate food safety skills they have learned in class.

For every dollar invested in teaching low-income adults in New York State about healthy food choices, the benefit is about $10 in reduced health care costs and improved productivity.

That’s what a group of Human Ecology researchers—Jamie Dollahite, associate professor of nutritional science; Donald Kenkel, professor of policy analysis and management; and graduate student C. Scott Thompson—found in a recent study.

They assessed the costs and benefits of the New York State Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), which gives low-income adults information and skills to improve their family’s diet and nutritional well-being.

The study was published in the May/June issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.

The researchers looked at the costs and benefits of the EFNEP program for 5,730 low-income adults who “graduated” from New York’s six-session EFNEP program in 2000 at a cost of about $900 per person.

Using the same approach that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget has used in cost-benefit analyses, the researchers not only estimated how the program participants’ changed behaviors affected their health and medical costs, but also their productivity, life expectancy, and quality of life.

All told, the improvements produced by EFNEP were estimated to be worth more than $49 million, producing a benefit-to-cost ratio of $9.59 per $1. In other words, each dollar spent on EFNEP resulted in about $10 in benefits.

“Cost-effectiveness was estimated to be as great as for many current health interventions, such as lifestyle changes to prevent diabetes,” said Dollahite. “The education provided by EFNEP also directly supports current goals of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as indicated in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Healthy People, 2010.”

EFNEP, which has been offering nutrition education in New York since 1969, is delivered through Cooperative Extension throughout the United States with federal, state, and local funding. It reaches more than 150,000 low-income adults each year.

The study was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, and Cornell Cooperative Extension. • • •

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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From Breast Cancer to Recycling Textiles: Human Ecology Student Interns Address Challenges Facing Central New York Communities

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Six students worked in New York communities last summer to apply the findings of Human Ecology research—ultimately bringing together the college’s education, research, and outreach initiatives.

Now in its second year, the program is a partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension. It gives students the opportunity to work independently to address a challenge facing central New York communities. This year, students worked on issues ranging from breast cancer risks to recycling textiles. Here’s a snapshot of how each of them spent the summer.

Name: Nicole Castelli, Fiber Science & Apparel Design Internship: Life Cycle Analysis of Textiles and Apparel Worked on . . . I assisted with and taught two workshops to youth and teenagers on how to redesign clothing—everything from T-shirts to dresses and pants—rather than throw away old clothing and buy new. I also compiled a list of businesses and web sites that dealt with recycling clothing, using eco-friendly fabrics, redesigning used clothing, and other “green” textile practices.

What was the most valuable thing you learned? “I learned a lot about how to present myself and how to teach. I’ve never had to lead a group before—it was a fun experience! It was rewarding to show youth new ways to recycle and teach them about the importance of recycling.”

Name: Joran Sequeira, Human Biology, Health and Society Internship: Research Intern for the Collaboration for Health, Activity, and Nutrition in Children’s Environments (CHANCE) Study Worked on . . . validating the study’s behavioral checklist by interviewing eligible parents to learn about their families’ food and physical activity choices.

How do you feel you made a difference in the community where you worked? “CHANCE is a nutrition education program for low-income parents. The questionnaire I worked on shows how much parents have gained from the program. It was incredibly gratifying to see the impact of CHANCE on these parents. The nutritional concepts and parenting practices taught will stay with me and serve a greater purpose when I have a family.”

>>>

From left: Charlotte Coffman, senior extension associate; Jamie Dollahite, associate professor; Charles Izzo, research associate; Josephine Swanson, assistant dean and associate director of Cornell Cooperative Extension; Nancy Wells, associate professor; and Mary Agnes Hamilton, senior research associate.

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Name: Laura Tomczik, Nutritional Sciences Internship: CHANCE - Collaboration for Health, Activity, and Nutrition in Children’s Environments, an effort to reduce childhood obesity.

Worked on . . . collecting and analyzing qualitative data about marketing strategies from project and partner agency staff, including Cornell Cooperative Extension, Head Start, Even Start, and child care programs. I also reviewed curriculum and program posters that are used as teaching tools in working with parents.

What was the most valuable thing you learned from the experience? “I enjoyed working with the curriculum because these are the materials that families will actually use. It makes so much sense to combine parenting and nutrition information.”

Name: Katherine Baumann, Human Development Internship: Family Life Development Center Program Assistant Worked on . . . conducting research on a home-visit nursing program that helps teenage mothers and designing evaluations for a parenting class. I also developed a literature database on the prevention of child abuse and neglect.

What was the most valuable thing you learned from the experience? “I had a unique vantage point this summer in being involved in both the real-life implementation of community programs as well as the behind-the-scenes research work on it. Viewing the juxtaposition between those two separate, yet connected, worlds gave me a better appreciation for all aspects of the work.”

Name: Rosalea Taam, Human Biology, Health and Society Internship: Children and Nature Research and Outreach Assistant Worked on . . . evaluating an after-school program run

by Cornell Cooperative Extension called “Urban Forest Adventures” designed to get more kids outside and encourage them to enjoy nature. My role was to conduct interviews with the kids, observe the program, and talk to program leaders to understand the program’s impact on kids.

What was the most valuable thing you learned from the experience? “I learned about the benefits and struggles that an outreach program encounters, and I learned the importance of building relationships within the community when you’re developing outreach programs.”

Name: Christian Cerrada, Human Development Internship: Community Mobilization for Youth Mentorship Worked on . . . developing a resource guide of servicelearning projects to encourage local towns to increase youth connectedness to their community. I also attended a focus group to evaluate a course on interviewing skills taught at a local high school to help youth interact with adults in their community.

How do you feel you made a difference in the community where you worked? “Our project helped youth to discover and reflect on the resources they can draw upon from their own community to succeed in life. It was especially encouraging when they expressed their appreciation for the program and enthusiasm about continuing it.”

Name: Laura Sugarwala, Nutritional Sciences (not pictured) Internship: Research Assistant for the Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors “Small Steps Are Easier Together” Project Worked on . . . analyzing data from an initiative to prevent obesity through a work-site program that encourages employees to take walks. I interviewed participants in the walking program and organized the survey data to determine if participants increased their walking over the 10-week study.

How do you feel you made a difference in the community where you worked?

“I was glad to be part of a group that works with people in rural areas to raise awareness about the importance of being active. I learned ways of thinking about how our environment dictates access to physical activity, and how important it is to make exercise an integral part of the workplace, where people spend so much time.” • • •

Volume 36, Number 2 • November 2008

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Human Ecology Experts Lead Symposium on AIDS Crisis in Africa

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By Sheri Hall

Dozens of scholars, policymakers, and stakeholders from across the globe gathered at the United Nations in New York City on September 9 for an academic symposium on the AIDS crisis in Africa coordinated by the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell.

The event was part of a series of five symposia focused on social, economic, and health problems in Africa. The series was designed to identify gaps in knowledge and policy, and guide future research. These symposia help to prepare and educate UN staff, delegates, and nonprofit organizations working to assist African countries achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a set of public health and economic goals developed by the United Nations to improve worldwide conditions by 2015.

The series is sponsored by the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell, the United Nations University (UNU), the Turkish Mission to the United Nations, and UNAIDS. “Cornell’s leadership in this series highlights the global focus and impact of our research,” said Patrick Stover, professor and director of both Cornell’s UNU Food and Nutrition Programme and the Division of Nutritional Sciences. “It offers us new opportunities to translate premier scholarship to application in the developing world for the benefit of all humanity.”

David Sahn, International Professor of Economics in Nutritional Sciences and the Department of Economics, led off the September symposium with an overview of the AIDS problem and objectives of the meeting, and then led the first panel, which addressed the effect of HIV and anti-retroviral therapy on families, children, and youth.

Globally, 33 million people suffer from HIV/AIDS, and more than two-thirds of the affected live in sub-Saharan Africa. This estimate includes some 1.7 million who were newly infected last year.

The infection rate in Africa varies widely in different regions, Sahn explained. In eight African countries alone, the number of HIV/AIDS cases exceeded 15 percent of their populations in 2005.

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

“While there is widespread agreement that HIV is having devastating consequences, finding the most cost-effective measures to prevent the disease and mitigate its consequences is still the source of considerable debate,” he said. “The growing availability of anti-retroviral therapies is having dramatic effects in terms of extending life of those who have AIDS, but new worries are emerging with the roll-out of these pharmaceuticals.”

Among the potential problems is the cost of the treatments, which could detract from money spent on other basic health care services. The prospect exists that the availability of treatments will increase the likelihood that some people will engage in risky sexual behavior, possibly increasing the spread of the disease.

The symposium went on to address the complex links between HIV/AIDS and Africa’s poverty, economic growth and productivity, as well as the way the disease affects reproductive and sexual health and behavior.

The event provided the experts the opportunity to talk frankly about the challenges the HIV/AIDS epidemic poses on Africa’s development needs and the disease’s specific impacts on household incomes, childhood health, education, and nutritional well-being.

Expert speakers from Cornell, Africa, and other institutions around the globe discussed ways of intensifying the efforts of local governments and communities to prevent the spread of the disease. These include improving access to anti-retroviral therapies and methodological approaches to conducting research.

The symposium was broadcast by videoconference with the African cities of Addis Ababa and Accra. The webcast can be viewed at www.ony.unu.edu/webcast. • • •

Afterword Better Living Through Design

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By Franklin Becker

Like the College of Human Ecology, the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA) is multifaceted. The starting point is its faculty. We have backgrounds in social and environmental psychology, human factors and ergonomics, economics, architecture, and interior and industrial design. And our research and teaching ranges from design history, socially responsible and sustainable design, and the design of computer keyboards to schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods. A common thread that ties together much of this groundbreaking research is a concern for how the planning, design, and management of our everyday physical environments affects our health and well-being.

DEA faculty examine the role of design in our lives in many ways. Professor Nancy Wells works with nutritionists, public health experts, and city planners to better understand whether pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods specifically designed to promote “active living” result in obese individuals exercising more.

Professor Gary Evans is working to disentangle the complex set of factors associated with poverty—the physical design of neighborhoods, crowding, and density— that affect how low-income children develop socially and intellectually. In an effort to understand how computer keyboards and office seating impact stress and injuries, Professor Alan Hedge works closely with his undergraduate and graduate students testing some of the most innovative electronics and seating being designed today. Professors Jack Elliott and Sheila Danko focus on the design of products and environments that are simultaneously socially and environmentally responsible, as well as beautiful and functional.

My own work shifted about four years ago from a focus on innovative workplace strategies in the corporate sector to my current focus on health and design in senior living facilities and hospitals. I am working with Paul Eshelman, an interior design professor, to develop and test prototypes we are calling “conversation corners.” This new product combines innovative forms of group seating with mobile and easily manipulated digital viewing stands used for looking at old family photos. The intent is to create a more rewarding experience for the family when they visit a parent or spouse with early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

In another project focused on the hospital setting, I have been working with graduate students to study whether creating more decentralized nursing “pods” in intensive care units (ICUs) contributes positively or negatively to

communication and teamwork among doctors, nurses, and other health professionals—and whether it increases nurses’ job satisfaction. (Early indications are that it did not.)

A recent extension of that study has focused on new nurse graduates. The research literature shows that these new nurses experience extremely high levels of stress when first starting their career, primarily because they are desperately afraid they do not know enough and may make a serious error jeopardizing the health of their patients.

We’ve been exploring how the design of nursing units impacts opportunities for informal learning between new nurse graduates and more experienced nurses, doctors, and other health professionals as the nurses work to build the competencies they need.

We’ve been focusing on nursing unit design because $25 to $35 billion is spent annually in the United States on major hospital construction projects. As part of a growing movement toward “evidence-based design,” our work is intended to systematically test whether the assumptions guiding new approaches to the design of hospitals actually meet their stated objectives. Do they reduce nurse fatigue?

Do they improve visual surveillance of patients by nurses, and thereby help reduce, for example, patient falls? Do they affect opportunities for informal learning and the sharing of information across the disciplinary boundaries of caregivers on a nursing unit? Other studies we are doing in ambulatory and emergency departments are examining the relationship between the physical attractiveness of these facilities and perceived quality of care, as well as whether any changes occur in the behavior of staff that may impact patient perceptions of health care quality.

My own and our department’s focus on health and wellbeing has surfaced over many years, more like a natural spring slowly filling a pond than from any consciously planned effort to build expertise in this area—at least until recently. Yet the pond is filling, and the timing could not be more opportune. We desperately need new approaches to improving the health and well-being of Americans, and DEA’s consideration of how design can help reflects perfectly the broader college interest in making health and well-being one of its central themes.

Franklin Becker is a professor and chair of the Department of Design & Environmental Analysis.

Cornell University College of Human Ecology Ithaca, NY 14853-4401

NOTE: This is the second of two issues of Human Ecology Vol. 36, 2008.

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Human Ecology • Cornell University

Nonprofit Organization U. S. Postage PAID Cornell University

The fifth and final house in Cornell’s West Campus System has been named for Flora Rose (at right, in a 1938 photo with Eleanor Roosevelt), who was recruited to Cornell 101 years ago as a lecturer in nutrition. Rose (1874–1959) worked with Martha Van Rensselaer to establish a department, and later a college, of home economics that evolved into today’s College of Human Ecology.

In 1905, Rose wrote a letter to administrators at both Stanford and Cornell University encouraging these forward-thinking, coeducational universities to start programs in home economics.

She later explained: “Neither of them had home economics, and in my reforming mood I decided that they should.” Rose’s letter convinced the Cornell administration to invite her as a lecturer in nutrition in 1907, which led to a full-time appointment in the agriculture department. Rose and Van Rensselaer were the first women appointed as full-time professors at Cornell.